u/Absent_Crest

This is mainly directed to the Tekken franchise.

I'll give them a pass for the Williams' sisters. Nina and Anna stay young after the timeskip in Tekken 3 by going through cryosleep. Its clear this decision was made to keep the two young but at least they made it relevant to their stories with Nina losing her memories, Anna trying to help her get them back, and experiments done on Nina during that time resulting in the new character Steve.

That's the only slack I'll give them. Kazumi Mishima is the final boss for Tekken 7, yet she only exists as a flashback. Yes she dies in the past but with all the crazy stuff that happens in Tekken and her being a literal demon, the writers couldn't think of a way for her to ignore that death and have her be an old lady?

Kunimitsu might be the worst. In Tekken 7 she comes back but its not her, its her daughter. Is it really so unbelievable that there could be an old lady ninja? She wouldn't even be that old, and she wears a mask constantly.

Lastly is Lidia who I mainly view as a missed opportunity. She's a traditional Karate practitioner and the Prime Minister of Poland... and she's 29. In a vacuum this would be fine but with all the other female characters being that age or younger, and hearing her description, you'd think she'd at least be in her late 30's.

Tekken has a few old men. Heihachi, Wang, Baek, Jinpachi, Leroy, Victor, Dr Bosconovitch. Yet zero old women. In fact I bet most people would struggle to think of playable old lady characters in gaming in general let alone fighting games.

And good luck seeing any visible signs off aging. The guys get beards, wrinkles, and go grey. Don't get me wrong, they exist but they're obscure as hell. Shout out to Otane Goketsuji from Power Instinct.

I can give a lot of leeway to characters making frustrating, stupid and/or illogical decisions, but there comes a point where I just want to yell at the screen and slap writer for forcing unnecessary conflict.

For those unfamiliar with the movie or game, Exit 8 is a liminal space story that involves the protagonist walking through a constantly repeating train station hallway. In order to get out of the loop they must spot "anomalies", if they experience any changes in the hallway they must turn around but if there are no changes they must keep walking forward. Do this correctly 8 times and you get out, make a mistake and you start all over again. The anomalies can be as obvious as blood dripping from the ceiling to incredibly subtle like a doorknob being out of place. A lot of the horror can come by being shocked by a dramatic change or the anxiety of having to make sure you've analyzed every minute detail before making the decision to move forward.

The protagonist understandably makes some errors in not noticing anomalies. One that I think works incredibly well is when he gets a phone call from his ex. Given the weird position he's been put in and the life changing news he recently received, it makes sense why he wouldn't realize that the call itself was an anomaly. But there are two glaring moments where I was screaming at him to just turn around.

Both these moments involve anomalies happening right at the start of the hallway. He's well versed enough at this point to know what constitutes an anomaly, he does not need to investigate to double check to make sure. And these aren't subtle changes, they are blaring and in your face. Any horror or fright I could have felt is replaced by frustration because I know that the protagonist's problem could be fixed if he literally just turned around and walked away, and I know that he knows that too.

What makes this worse is the fact that these two moments could have worked if they just had the anomalies happen further into the hallway instead of right at the start of it. How much scarier would it have been if the lights started flickering and then blacked out if the protagonist was towards the end of the hallway and he had to make his back through the darkness and monsters instead of it happening at the beginning where I know he could've just walked away no problem. Same goes for the tsunami warning sirens blaring right at the start of the hallway.

Women not allowed to age.